that canadian girl

Having just read David Pogue’s review of iMovie ‘08, I think it’s safe to say it doesn’t appeal to me and I won’t be rushing out to get a copy. Going from a somewhat buggy but generally nicely featured video editing application to what sounds like a painfully basic piece of software doesn’t strike me as such a great idea.

IMovie ‘08, on the other hand, has been totally misnamed. It’s not iMovie at all. In fact, it’s nothing like its predecessor and contains none of the same code or design. It’s designed for an utterly different task, and a lot of people are screaming bloody murder.

The new iMovie was, as Apple admits, designed primarily for throwing together movies quickly. It lets you scan through a clip to see what’s in it, isolate the good parts, and rapidly drop them into a sequence.

But iMovie 6 was just as good at those tasks; you could scrub through, chop and drag its clips just as easily. Meanwhile, iMovie ‘08 is incapable of the more sophisticated editing that the old iMovie made so enjoyable. The old iMovie offered the essential tools of professional programs like Final Cut Pro without the cost or complexity.

The new iMovie, for example, is probably the only video-editing program on the market with no timeline—no horizontal, scrolling strip that displays your clips laid end to end, with their lengths representing their durations. You have no indication of how many minutes into your movie you are.

What more can I say? Other than “Bollocks to that, I’m sticking to the old one!”

Today, there were far too many news items on which I wanted to comment, so rather than write five separate posts, I thought I’d merge them into one highly artistic drawing.

1. Nokia admits to battery issue: I’ve blogged about this on Taptology earlier this afternoon, but the gist of it is that Nokia is having to recall 46 million batteries due to overheating and a risk of them going pop inadvertently.
2. Kids need to walk to school: In my days, we had to walk uphill both ways in 5ft of heavy snow, but today increasingly overweight kids are getting dropped off at the school door by lazy, time-poor parents, resulting in an all around jolly (read “fat”) family. If there were less cars in the city, we’d be solving the Cambridge Congestion Charge issue at the same time!
3. Mattel recalls toys for containing lead and small magnets: Toys with unsafe small magnets and lead-based paint is cause for a recall, ensuring kids don’t swallow two magnets, as these might be cause for indigestion or magnetised-together bowels. Sorry but I’m finding that mental picture far too funny for my own good… Plus a bit of lead paint is good character building, my dad would’ve said when I was a kid.
4. Too much caffeine: A girl was taken to hospital after ingesting 7 double espressos. Methink she was just doing some necessary preparations and practicing for those long “last night before essay hand-in deadline” sessions.
5. Scotland throws a strop asking for its independence (and some pocket money, plskthx): Another one I covered a little earlier (with a great comment from Liz) – Scotland’s SNP government has set out its plans for a referendum on independence, despite opposition from the other main political parties.

And that’s the news for today! That Canadian Girl: Reading the news so you don’t have to

I find it difficult to believe that no one along the line from high manager to the mailroom guy spoke up to suggest offering e-billing earlier to customers. Is it a requirement to be devoid of any common sense to work at AT&T?!

I can hear the trees crying for their lost brothers and sisters from here.

[Via Engadget]

Like a stroppy teenager, Scotland is stamping its feet, looking for independence. There are plans and talks of a referendum and need for an open conversation. Oh here we go, it’s bloody Quebec all over again!

So let’s open the conversation, then…

Scotland: “We want independence!”
Rest of GB: “Can you sustain yourself financially?”
Scotland: “Well… not really… but…”
Rest of GB: “There. Conversation over. Go to your room and don’t come down til you’ve got those crazy ideas out of your head!”

Last week, I let a bit of steam out about the ridiculous Congestion Charge plans in Cambridge. But, unfortunately for Shona Johnstone, I’m not done with her case. The logic in her radio interview with Andie Harper is like Swiss cheese.

First, “I don’t think many people have appointments at Addenbrooke’s before 9:30am”. I’ve only looked at a few clinics’ opening hours and, while this is far from an exhaustive or scientific attempt at research, the first one, physiotherapy, opens at 8:15am. Shona: 0, The Rest Of Us: 1

Second, Councillor Johnstone seems to have an issue with London commuters. There’s no questioning that Cambridge, also known as the Silicon Fen, is full of life, brimming with successful and exciting businesses, startups in the Science Park and promising students, who often stay to work locally. There’s no brain drain conspiracy, and Cambridge is far from a commuter town. So Shona, take off the tin foil hat, it’s cute but you’re wrong. Shona: 0, The Rest Of Us: 2

This nicely brings me on to my suggested solutions…

Do not include Science Park and Park & Rides into the affected areas: I suspect the P&Rs aren’t going to be included, but based on the zoning map that’s been circulating, they’re not yet excluded clearly enough for my liking. As far as the Science Park goes, it would be completely and utterly bonkers to include it. The businesses settled there have selected it specifically for being on the edge of town, away from the city centre traffic. Staff won’t want to pay a fiver a day to get to work, and employers won’t want to cover the cost of roughly a thousand pounds per staff member. They’ll simply bugger off to Milton, taking their business out of Cambridge. That doesn’t strike me as a positive move for the city.

Improve transportation FIRST to see whether the situation alleviates: Currently, taking the P&R is a pain in the @$$; at peak hours, it’s so packed that you have to wait for the next one, which might not come for another half hour, for all you know! At other times, the entire P&R parking is full, forcing you to change your plans altogether and drive into town. So the logical first step is to invest in public transportation improvements, and make people more aware of the great service available. If it IS better than driving into Cambridge, dodging cyclists and swearing at the price of parking, we’ll do it. We won’t need to be coerced into it.

Finally, if the Congestion Charge must go ahead for the centre of town, give carpoolers an exemption. Anyone who makes an effort to reduce the number of cars on the road by sharing the journey to work, that should be recognised. In Ottawa, certain lanes are reserved for taxis and vehicles containing more than two people, giving carpoolers a valuable advantage over everyone else. That’s a far more positive way of encouraging public transportation and carpooling.

So hopefully, the councillors will see sense and reconsider the Congestion Charge plan, opting for positive reinforcement rather than ripping off the local community. If they don’t, I’ll get my protest hat on, and we’ll go have a little party on Shona’s doorstep, how about that?

If you live in the Cambridge area like I do, you’ve probably also had a heated discussion about the congestion charge which could soon come into place across Cambridge.

Looking at the Congestion Charge map (Downloadable PDF, source article), it’s like someone gave an idiot a big black Sharpie and told them to go nuts on a map of the city – the whole of Cambridge within A14 and M11 boundaries is included in the congestion charge area! That’s inclusive of all the Park & Ride stations, the Science Park and the Addenbrooke’s hospital.

Of course, it’s for the good of the city, since “Cambridge is a medieval city and it simply wasn’t designed for motor cars”, says Shona Johnstone, Sharpie-armed village idiot council leader.

Sure, I appreciate that the center of Cambridge – in my eyes defined as the Grafton Centre and Lion Yard area – isn’t made for high traffic density. I also appreciates that this only applies to the hours between 7:30 and 9:30 in the morning.

But the Science Park? The Park & Ride areas? You’ve got to be kidding me! Isn’t the whole point of those being on the edge of town keeping cars outside of city centre and encouraging the use of such services?

I’m reasonably convinced that the owners of buildings in the Science Park will come out with pick axes against Johnstone, and that these areas will be excluded from the final ruling, but someone still thought it was worth putting forward the suggestion to include ALL of Cambridge in the Congestion Charge area. This leaves me with that niggling feeling you get when you sense that idiocy might still prevail over simple common sense, and that a repeated headdesk motion may be the only thing you’ll be left with.

Cambridge Council is wasting its breath on me trying to tell me it isn’t doing it for the revenue they can get from the thousands of people who enter the boundaries of the city every morning. Why else would it include high density, yet city-fringe areas? We’re not the ones wrecking havoc amongst the pretty stone streets of town centre. The only bloody benefit I see is that they might get cyclists off Mill Road.

So if you’re as convinced as I am that Cambridge needs to look at alternatives before dipping into our collective wallet, take action! You’ll find the petition against the Congestion Charge here and the Facebook group dedicated to discussing the issue here. The “official” Cambridge Congestion Charge discussion group is also a good place to go vent your frustration and find out what actions can be taken.

I would suggest that Cambridge look at the OC Transpo bus system in Ottawa, Canada – my hometown – amongst some, for tips on how to do a better job at offering us a more suitable public transportation service. I never appreciated OC Transpo until I came to the UK and realised that most towns have completely disjointed, technologically-incompetent companies running the show, leaving us standing in the cold rain – literally. Even in bloody mid-July!

Oh no, now I’m getting started on the weather, I really better stop here.

Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from a U.S. aid organisation have used them to explore pornographic sites on the Internet, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Thursday.

NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images stored on several of the children’s laptops.

Well, what? Did you expect otherwise?

[From Reuters, via gapingvoid on Twitter]

Get your wellies, raincoats and a small boat. You’re going to need it tomorrow according to MetCheck. A quick search for Cambridge is forecasting over 60mm of rain tomorrow morning.

Thank Dog, I live at the top of a hill!

If I have to read any more iPhone-related news, I’m going to be sick. Getting through my RSS reader feeds today involved catching up with posts going back about three days. And no joke, I think at least 75% of posts were iPhone news.

There’s been so much Kool Aid drinking that, as Hugh points out, people have hardly noticed that someone’s trying to blow up London.

Please tell me about kittens and pretty things instead.

On the eve of the launch of the iPhone in the US, I thought I’d finally come out clean with my views on it.

[Yes, I know you're all sick to death of hearing about the iPhone, but bear with me; I've been quiet about it since the day it was announced, and even today, I haven't completely made up my mind on how I feel about it, and I need to verbalise my thoughts.]

It’s going to be a shiny, sleek and unique gadget. It’s going to take the world by storm, and wallets by the throat. We’re all going to drool over it, have a flick at the screen and a poke at the SDK (well not me, but you know…) Oh and we’re going to hear about it for a few more bloody months…

I want to wish the iPhone into being as good as we all hope it will be, but I can’t help but have some reservations.

First, that’s one great big screen to try and protect. Don’t know about you, but my phone, my keys and my lipglosses often have happy little tea parties in the bottom of my handbag, and I’m not sure the iPhone would be keen on the company. Granted the plastic screen has been replaced with a tougher glass one, but even while protected in a big iPod sock-type-thing, it’s a big screen against which pressure can be applied by a not-so-careful owner.

Also, the battery life is bound to be pretty poor with such a screen to power, regardless of their claims (scroll down this article for the comparison). I already found Shitbrick* and my N95 to suck the life out of the battery something senseless the moment I used the web browser, so while they’ve upped the claimed battery life, I struggle to believe that it’ll really be that great.

But my main concern is really, honestly… just how long it’ll be before I can get my greasy mitts on an iPhone… Not necessarily OWN one, but have a good little play for a few days and decide whether we’re made for each other.

Until then, however, I’m thoroughly enjoying the company of my wonderful and versatile N95. *cradles N95 in her arms* Don’t worry you’re not going anywhere anytime soon, little thing! It’s lived up to expectations, and continued to amaze me. Will the iPhone also live up to expectations?

Well, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow morning, won’t we?

[* That's the loving name I gave to my N70 after it started throwing a wobbly at random, telling me to "Close down applications. Running out of memory!" when nothing was open, then being too busy throwing that wobbly to let me calm it down. What a pile of crap, paperweight at best!]